Outdooractive Review: Features, Pricing, & Are They Worth It?

Whether you are looking for inspiration to plan your next adventure or need a helping hand exploring a chosen trail, there are so many apps out there to support your outdoor life!

As nature lovers ourselves, we know the importance of being equipped with a reliable app for route finding and navigation. Our previous selection of free hiking app reviews focused on AllTrails and komoot. 

Outdooractive is another alternative that offers high-quality tour and trail suggestions for over 30 outdoor activities. It is the dominating choice for European users although it can be used by anyone in the world!

Read our Outdooractive review to find if it’s the right choice for you.

What is Outdooractive?

Founded by Hartmut Wimmer in 1994, Outdooractive is an app that offers a lot of options for trails, tracks, and routes for various outdoor activities in your region. Most of these tours are designed by professional tourist partners of the company to ensure they are accurate, reliable, and comprehensive in structure. They come with a detailed topographic map for navigation that you can use online or offline. 

If you are an outdoor pro, you can even use Outdooractive to build your own trips and share them with the community of users! You also have the chance to rate, review, and comment about trails and routes mentioned on the platform. Outdooractive is one of the oldest and prominent outdoor apps used by over 10 million outdoor enthusiasts today. 

Outdooractive Features

Search routes

You can use the app as a route finder to look for trails suitable for hiking, cycling, mountain biking, skiing, and many other activities. Once you specify the region and activity, you will be given a list of suggestions. Many of the suggestions are very informative and comprehensive, including videos, photos, points of interest, and GPS tracks.  

Plan routes

Like komoot, Outdooractive also offers you the facility to build your own routes. You can either provide the start and endpoints or plot waypoints directly on the map. The app will then suggest the best route for you. The custom-made routes can also be downloaded and printed.

Navigation

Outdooractive recently acquired ViewRanger, an app renowned for its sophisticated mapping and navigation tools and boasts of offering all its features for you. Turn-by-turn navigation is available in both text and voice formats. 

Share your experiences

Be an inspiration to fellow travelers by sharing your adventures with the global community of Outdooractive users. You can add photos, comments, and reviews. 

How Much Does Outdooractive Cost?

Outdooractive offers 3 subscription plans for its users. Its Basic version is free for use. If you want more features, you can upgrade to the Pro version for €2.50 per month or Pro+ for €5 per month. Users can sign up for a free trial to review the features and decide if they are worth the price.

Both paid versions are ad-free and give you offline access to routes and maps. You will also be entitled to discounts from Outdooractive’s partner brands. The Pro version offers Topo maps and satellite imagery along with many other interesting perks. The Pro+ version offers expert-level maps with official details, 3D planning, and many other features ideal for off-road pros. 

What We Like about Outdooractive

Global coverage

Like komoot, this is an app that offers information on trails and tours from around the world. It’s a cool app for travelers who don’t want to go through the hassle of downloading region-specific apps to explore outdoors. The fact that you can also contribute and popularize lesser-known trails is an added benefit!

Rich in detail

As most of the tour suggestions are curated by experts, you would find them to very descriptive and helpful. Outdooractive also provides you updated information on trail conditions, dangers, and warning levels to ensure you have a safe experience. Even the maps are filled with interesting geodata. All of these provide you a well-rounded idea about the trail you are about to explore. 

Convenient

It’s easy to find trails based on your activity and requirements as there are so many filters to narrow down the list of recommendations. You can select the preferred sport under “category” and then specify the route length, tour ascent, duration, and other important characteristics. 

What We Don’t Like about Outdooractive

Lack of great ViewRanger features

The acquisition of ViewRanger has actually frustrated a majority of its users. VewRanger’s route plotting and navigation features don’t work at the optimal level as they used to before the acquisition. It seems that Outdooractive has also missed out on retaining many beloved features of ViewRanger. GPS acquisition, route alignment, and many other features work inconsistently. Loss of access to previously purchased maps on ViewRanger is also another noteworthy drawback.

Complex and glitchy

One of the primary features of an outdoor app is reliability but Outdooractive seems to be lacking it. The app isn’t very user-friendly and intuitive. It’s difficult to use some features like route finding, planning, and exporting as the app tends to crash more often. When you reopen the app, the changes aren’t saved most of the time. The new user-interface is also poorly designed, and the overall performance is very slow.

Is Outdooractive Worth It?

The answer really depends on what you are looking for. If you need a platform that offers great trail options with detailed content, this is a great option. Outdooractive’s large collection of trail information is its greatest strength. 

However, according to many Outdooractive reviews, an alternative hiking app — komoot— is ahead when it comes to navigation. It’s also important to consider the complaints of ViewRanger users who don’t find Outdooractive to have adopted all its features successfully. 

Start planning your adventures!